How do you deal with the pressure from the mass in the rectum?

did you continue with your treatments afterwards or did you have to wait to recover and then continue with your treatments? I did bring up the issue with the doctors but they just offered stool softeners. I get the feeling that the doctors and nurses don't understand what I'm going through. The oncologist made a side comment to his nurse that I might be in the ER over last weekend for emergency surgery but I was able to poop on Saturday and Wednesday but I was very worried about making it to treatment. I really wanted to start this week but was disappointed and worry that it will start next week. The question: can I make it? I don't have any pressure or pain right now. I probably have two days of stuff in me and I'd need another day or two before there's pressure to go on the rectum. I took a Miralax and some of the liquid came out and I'm considering a bottle of magnesium citrate to get more out. I'm also really hungry as the natural reaction is to cut back on eating food with this kind of problem. So I'm not really at the ER stage - moreso worried about it and maybe close to it.

So a few more details would be helpful. You went to the ER, told them your problem, they took a scan or felt around and decided to do surgery. How long did it take to recover and did you just keep going to treatments or did you have to stop them to recover and then start them back up. I'm sure that the mass will just start growing again after any surgery so I need the treatments to shrink it and don't want to wait or wait too long afterwards.

airborne72 said:

Constipation and Obstructive Mass

NHMike:

I have learned to deal with opiod induced constipation.  Those small pills can quickly turn feces into concrete!  While I was doing so I had no idea that I also had an obstructive (cancerous) mass in my rectum.  Consequently, it was doubly challenging to evacuate my bowels.

This is the solution that I finally discovered (works for me anyway).  Each morning I would mix some Miralax into a glass of juice.  Then when it was time for my daily BM, I would simply irrigate my rectum and lower colon with warm water.  Little did I know that the miralax solved the constipation issue, but it would not move due to the obstructive mass.  The water enema provided sufficient liquid to allow it to slide around the mass.

I wrote that paragraph in past tense.  My situation has changed now that I am taking Xeloda and radiation.  I no longer have any need for the Miralax, but I still must irrigate.  My mass is shrinking and even "sloughing off" so hopefully soon I will no longer need to irrigate.  However, all of that may change after my surgery and become a thing of the past if I need to have an ostomy.

Crisis management, pain management, financial management, material management and even feces management.  Who would have thought...?

Jim

Hello Jim,

I have a box of Miralax packages and I guess I'll try them one a day (I have been using them here and there since I bought more than I needed for the Colonoscopy prep). I also have a bottle of Magnesium Citrate that I was considering using though that's more like using a hammer. And the nurse talked about Colace and something else - maybe Senokot. Those appear to be stool softeners.

When you say irrigate, I assume that you're talking about using enema equipment. Do you know how much water you typically used and did you mix anything in with it? That's something that I could try to keep things manageable until the tumor starts to shrink. Also, how many days on Xeloda and radiation did it take before you determined that the tumor is shrinking? Thank you for your reply above.

This cancer stuff is really heavy and hits like a ton of bricks in all the ways you talked about. The biggest problem that I have these days is worry - there are problems but the worries make it a lot worse.

mike

Do you lift? Are you lifting through the chemo and radiation?

airborne72 said:

"If dreams were thunder and lightning was desire...."

Hey Mike:

At face value that is a simple question and it should have a simple answer.  However, I'll give you the loooooong answer.

When I was in my prime I was an avid runner (10K; 15 K; marathons).  To improve my stamina and even speed I would lift, but not a gut-wrenching, moaning, drop the bar on the floor type of lifting.  Somewhere between light weights and heavy weights.  That all came to an end when my lumbar spine gave out and I submitted to a two level fusion in 2011.  The outcome of that procedure left me in more pain and with less stability, so we revised it in 2013 and I ended up with the same outcome.

Due to the two rods and six screws in my lumbar spine my mobility quickly lessened and even walking short distances (500 yards) became a challenge.  That messed with me mentally and physically.  I tried all modalities of therapy and non surgical intervention seeking relief, but I finally succumbed to pain management in 2014 after three years of deferring that course of action.  That is when I began my journey with opioid induced constipation which could have been a trigger for rectal cancer (who knows?). 

Currently (with the exception of this tour of duty with Xeloda and gamma rays), my exercise regimen is limited to pushing a lawn mower and working in the garden.  If I don't keep moving I will slowly and gradually loose my flexibility and strength, but my movement now no longer includes running or lifting.  Life provides us the opportunity to adapt; if we don't then we will be left behind or even left out of life.  With sadness and lots of humility, I hung up my running shoes and cancelled my membership at the local exercise facility and accepted the title of "retired runner."

On a related topic, I have very strong opinions about the recent national opioid epidemic.  My condition and pain level is chronic and I am dependent upon opioid medication to manage that pain to improve the quality of my life.  I am not addicted to opioid medication, I am dependent upon them.  There is a difference and that distinction is lost in the current uproar about opioid meds.  I, as well as thousands of others in similar physical distress, are facing increasing difficulty in getting prescriptions filled.  For the record, I would give nearly anything I own to be able to swap the opioids for the opportunity to exercise, break a sweat, and then enjoy the relaxing feeling provided by natural endorphins.

And that leads to the subject of my response.  That phrase is a snipet from the lyrics of a John Prine song (Angel from Montgomery).  Taken out of text, it describes how I feel about the lost ability to run and the life altering effects of chronic spinal pain.  Now, with the addition of rectal cancer to my medical resume, I long even more for the old Jim - that younger, healthier person who used to run and lift weights. 

The simple answer to your question - no, I do not lift weights.  I barely have the energy to pick tomatoes in the garden.  But this too shall pass.

Jim

Hello Jim,

I've always been active and not being able to run, lift, and play tennis would be very tough to get through. I have had to stop in the past for injuries but it was okay because I knew that I'd be back at it when the injury healed. So I can imagine the stress in having to give up a lot of the things that you had to give up.

My mother had curvature of the spine back in the 1990s and she had an early procedure at New England Baptist to have a rod put in her back and that stopped the progression of the curvature. She has trouble walking and doing things that she took for granted when she was younger but she adapted. This getting old stuff stinks and I don't consider myself that old. I'd guess that you don't consider yourself that old either.

I am planning on hitting tennis balls this week and would like to take video of it just to show that you can do a few things while on chemo and radiation treatments. I don't know if I'll do the video as it's a headache to set up but I do want to hit just to see whether or not I can.

The opiod problems are severe in my state. I think that it's one of the worst states in the country on a per capita basis in deaths. There's all sorts of crazy crime associated with it (a coworker was hit by a vehicle trying to evade the police), and  the number of people that get arrested for drug crimes is crazy (there's a list of people and pictures every Friday in the local paper). My son knows someone from his driving class that lives a quarter mile away with several arrests for posession and dealing. So the situation out there is tragic. That said, the surgeon said that she'd give my oxycodone for pain after the surgery. I'm actually quite scared to take it because of the potential for addiction. Same goes for anything else that's potentially addictive. But maybe I won't have a choice because they put it into an IV or because I can't take the pain. I won't know until I get there.

I understand the issue of dependency. I have a friend with lung cancer. A miracle-drug has shrunk his tumor quite a bit but it has stopped shrinking and he's basically on maintenace mode now. He has to take the drug for the rest of his life or until another drug comes along that can kill the tumor. I think that he's somewhat comforted that we are making a lot of progress in cancer.

One of my tennis partners damaged his shoulder many years ago in a fall. He was never able to get tennis functionality fully back into that arm. So he developed left-handed strokes. It took him ten years to build up decent strokes but he wanted to be able to play that badly that he worked on them. Yeah, to be able to run, lift, and feel the exhilaration of a workout.

I'm very sorry that you've lost that.

For some reason I can't start new threads so I dug up an old one and will reply to it.

I got the results from the post-chemorad MRI and the tumor has gone from 100+ cm^3 to less than 10 cm^3 or shrinkage of over 90%. The three enlarged lymph nodes decreased from 40% to 76%. So the chemo+radiation worked quite well in my case.

I was wrong with the number of weeks. I checked my calendar and surgery is 7 weeks out. I told the doctor that I was done on Sep 1 but my calendar indicates that I was done on Sep 8.